I just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s ode to Linux called In the beginning…was the command line
And yet, command lines still have their place. When I worked for Datek, we had an alternative to filling out an online form to trade stocks for active/day traders. It was just a small pop-up box with a text field–not even a submit button–that you could type an order string into (e.g. b100AMZN15.51), hit enter and have the oder execute. Yes, users had to learn the grammar of the command string, but that small portion of traders who did so and used it, loved it.
Likewise, recently command lines seem to be making a comeback thanks to a growing number of power users on the web platform. Sugardcodes and YubNub (WTF is it with these names? gah!) both offer command line interfaces to YouTube, ESPN, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc. I’ve been playing around with YubNub’s plugin for Firefox and it’s nifty and not hard to learn at all. (There’s a crazy number of ways to access YubNub.)AIM bots like moviefone and SmarterChild are command line interfaces with hints of personality and the bonus of being available in a window many people always have open anyway: the IM buddy window.
Where I think we’ll see a lot of use from command lines is in mobile devices, where screen real estate and entering full URLs is a real issue. (Why type in http://www.google.com when you can just type g?) YubNub is already doing this. Once can also imagine them being used for things like kiosks and internet appliances, where typing URLs without a keyboard would be tedious.
With all the cool new interaction paradigms out there, we shouldn’t forget the humble command line.
A few of the pros a CLI has over a GUI; Quicker both in terms of performance and flow, poweruser scripting capability, api-esque interface for other apps, remote configuration utilising simple/robust protocols and coverage of critical failstates: a basic subsection of my CLI is hardcoded to the device so if the system becomes corrupted resulting in the OS unable to push out the presentation layer, users can telnet in.
When OSX started shipping, I bought my first Powerbook. After years of working mixed CLI/GUI on various *nix systems, I just couldn’t justify buying anything that prevented me from having direct access to my files and data.
I suspect that’s one reason you see so many Powerbooks being sold today — *nix lovers who don’t want to deal with the hassles of installing and configuring linux/bsd software on Intel laptops. Just buy a Powerbook and it works.
The return of CLI is a good thing — giving more efficient means of control (and potentially a wider variety of controls) to those willing to learn a more complicated command interface.
Just got pinged with this, CLI for windows (need to watch past the spell check demo)
http://www.humanized.com/movies/trailer.php